Page 9 of Blood Slumberm

“I’m not hungry.”

“I need you fit for our dancing lesson.”

He looked down his nose at her. The top of her head came up to his collarbone. He wouldnotthink of how well her body had fit against his as he had drunk down her pleasure. “I don’t need instruction from you. I am an excellent dancer.”

“Do you know the Widow’s Weave?”

He scrambled to remember any dance by that name.

“I didn’t think so,” she concluded. “Some of the dances from your era are still popular, but there are many new ones you will encounter once we’re inside.”

“This is your plan? We are to dance into Rixor’s Solstice festivities and—what—kill him with the minstrels looking on?”

“We must make an impression at the ball in order to secure an invitation to the feast. We will take on the identities of the prince and princess of Clementia, who never socialize in the city. They won’t be here to expose us, and everyone at the ball will be eager to meet the elusive royals.”

“You expect me to pose as a Pavo?” Troi protested in outrage. “And your husband!”

“Do you have a better idea for getting near Rixor?”

“Yes. I’ll conceal myself with Hesperine magic and be close enough to kill him before he even knows I’m there.”

“Do your Hesperine skills include breaking through the Anthrian wards he surrounds himself with at all times? The wards made of magefire, your greatest weakness? You don’t seem to have made any progress against the ones at your own door, after all.”

Troi gritted his teeth. “And how is a fugitive mage of Chera to get through such wards?”

Celandine pulled a spindle from her pocket and smiled smugly. “Fortunately for you, I am an unspinner.”

The revelation sent a chill down Troi’s spine. With her talent, not even the Sanctuary wards on his home could keep her away from him. “Why am I your chosen partner for this plot? What need have you for a Hesperine?”

“You shall see. I get you inside. You commit the assassination. Rixor dies in my chair with me looking on.”

Pure rage throbbed in her aura, the fury of an animal lashing out at the one who had chained it. Troi had best not give her a reason to want him dead, too.

He had to regain his full power before she turned on him. His strength would be short-lived between drinks until he was fully recovered from his starved sleep. His only way to protect himself from her was to accept her blood. Without further protest, he took her offered wrist.

He braced himself, but nothing could have prepared him for another taste of her. He bit back a groan as her complex flavor bloomed on his tongue. Her anger and grief filled him, companions for his own. But somewhere under those bitternotes, he tasted the rich sweetness of a passionate woman who had once loved life.

It would be all too easy to lay her back on the nearest banquet table for a true feast. He released her before he lost his head.

She picked up a cloth from the table and wiped her wrist efficiently. Troi rubbed a hand over his mouth, willing his fangs to recede. They didn’t heed him.

“Do you feel able to dance now?” she asked.

“Yes.” With her life force rushing through his body, he felt he could levitate to the moons and back.

“Show me what you can do on the dance floor, then, Taurus.”

Every time she said his old family name, he was rankled by a mixture of emotions he had no wish to sort out. “As long as we are plotting murder together, call me Troi.”

She held out her hand to him. “Very well, Troi. I expect you to call me Celandine. If I hear you say ‘corpse witch’ or ‘Pavo harpy,’ I will hound you back to your bed with my distaff and weave a new curse around you.”

“I wouldn’t dare insult my blood supply.” He took her hand.

She led him to the open aisle between the banquet tables and pressed their opposite palms together. “This is the starting position.”

“You touch hands as the first move of the dance?”

Her peal of laughter filled the hollow room. “I never expected a heretic to sound so scandalized! Yes, Grandpapa, men and women touch hands during dances these days!”

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